Man Dies After Snake Bite at Sea of Galilee

A 57-year-old man from central Israel was bitten by a snake and died as a result during a camping trip to Lake Kinneret.

At first the man felts woozy and lost consciousness. After he received medical attention and multiple resuscitation attempts failed, medics were forced to declare him dead.

The man arrived at the Haklaim (Farmer’s) Beach on the Sea of Galilee near Kibbutz Hukok on the northwestern shore of the sea with his wife and daughter.

While vacationing at the beach, during the evening hours, near the family’s tent and with darkness already encroaching and making visibility problematic, the man was bitten on his right hand.

His daughter later told medical officials that immediately afterwards she saw an animal slithering away from the scene, leading her to assume her father was bitten by a snake, a fact corroborated by medial examination.

“When we arrived at the scene the man was unconscious,” Taleb Abdullah, an MDA paramedic, told Ynet.

“His right hand bore bite marks. We performed multiplies resuscitation attempts for close to an hour, but were eventually forced to declare the man dead,” he concluded.

Since the beginning of the summer, there have been numerous snake biting incidents in the north.

Thursday, a 28-year-old man from one of the Arab villages in the north was brought to the Ziv Medical Center in Safed in serious conditions after being bitten by a snake. He was hospitalized in the hospitals ICU where he still remains in serious but stable condition.

… Local vipers, Vipera palaestinae, are the most common poisonous snakes found in Israel. They grow to an average length of 90 centimeters (36 inches) and are mainly nocturnal. Their venom contains a hematoxin that damages blood circulation and the lymphatic system. They generally feed on small rodents, toads, and birds.